Ilford Printing Paper Costs Blowout.

[Michael Kadillak]

Noticed the other day that a 250 sheet of Ilford double weight glossy warm tone 8x10 printing paper jumped dramatically from $358 to $498 a box where their classic 250 sheet box of 8x10 printing paper (glossy and also double weight) is still selling for $354. Really?

Is this an issue of supply and demand (ie people buying far more warm tone and Ilford being able to get away with it) or is something else going on? The double weight paper of both products has to be the same so what am I missing here?

Fortunately I have been printing with the classic paper because this is an unfortunate development (no pun intended).

[interneg]

what am I missing here?

MGWT has always been markedly more expensive than regular MG Classic. Classic sells more than WT, and WT may also have components/ manufacturing steps that are significantly more expensive/ energy intensive (and if custom organic chemicals are required, they make silver look cheap).

[Oren Grad]

What interneg said. The only exceptions I've seen have been temporary artifacts of variable stock turnover at a given retailer after Harman has implemented a general price increase.

[Duolab123]

Fomatone is sold at a premium as well.

[Drew Wiley]

Everything is going up. But MGWT is a higher quality product than Classic, and undoubtedly more expensive to make. I'm running low on it in 16X20, but have a sizable stash of old EMaks 20X24 graded, so might to able to forestall another MGWT purchase for awhile.
Bergger warmtone is similar, and packaged only 25 sheets per box, so around half the price per box of MGWT, but seems to be temporarily unavailable at the moment. I use quite a bit of MG Cooltone too, which is priced the same as Classic. Classic is nice, but not the superstar that MGWT is, especially when it comes to toning potential and sheer DMax.

[Hans Berkhout]

Ilford WT has 3 light sensitive layers instead of two, if I remember well. This may explain part of the higher (production)cost compared to Ilford MG Classic

Bob Carnie is an expert on this paper, thanks for your comments over the years on this forum Bob.

[Michael Kadillak]

Ilford WT has 3 light sensitive layers instead of two, if I remember well. This may explain part of the higher (production)cost compared to Ilford MG Classic

Bob Carnie is an expert on this paper, thanks for your comments over the years on this forum Bob.

Thanks for the comments guys. The three light sensitive layers instead of two makes sense so thanks for the detail Hans. Although the price increase bites, the reality of the situation looking at it from an alternative perspective is Ilford is still making WT. Just like the increase in film cost the operative word in the new world of analog photography is "efficiency". Making optimal use of the materials we have access to.

[Chuck Pere]

This is what Ilford says in their tech bulletin:
MULTIGRADE papers are coated with an emulsion which is a mixture of three separate emulsions. Each emulsion is a basic blue sensitive emulsion to which is added different amounts of green sensitising dye. Thus, part of the mixed emulsion is sensitive mainly to blue light, part to blue light
with some sensitivity to green light and part to both blue and green light.

So it appears that there is no difference between Classic and Warmtone in number of emulsions.

[Oren Grad]

FWIW, I'll add that MG Warmtone is my favorite Ilford paper, by a fair margin, in both FB and RC (though the two are quite different!). My printing volume is low enough that the price hasn't been a big issue, but as it keeps increasing I'll just need to pay more careful attention to efficiency, as Michael says.

[bob carnie]

Ilford WT has 3 light sensitive layers instead of two, if I remember well. This may explain part of the higher (production)cost compared to Ilford MG Classic

Bob Carnie is an expert on this paper, thanks for your comments over the years on this forum Bob.

That is a nice compliment, thank you Hans .. when Ilford introduced this wonderful paper, Sample kits were sent to printers world wide approx 1994 or 95 era, if I can remember correct we got 5 boxes each that contained about 10 sheets of 8 x 10 paper, the only reference was the colour of the box. We were asked to give our straight out opinion of which paper was in our opinion the best paper. I chose the red box as did most of the printers and for a long time Ilford used a reddish box for this paper.

I have been split printing from day one this paper was released, many people have different opinions and ways of using this paper... Some use 0 and 5 - I do not use 0 unless I want to flash in some density in the highlights , I have found that using 0 has a solarizing effect on the blacks with this paper .... so for me in my darkroom I use a low contrast and 5 contrast method of printing, If I am using my Devere enlarger which is dichroic I will adjust the aperture and timer to have around a 8 second to 20 second base low filter exposure. then I will hit the timer without adjusting the time or aperture to balance out the contrast that is determined by the ORIGINAL scene. If its a low contrast ORIGINAL scene then I could hit the timer with 200 magenta two, three , or four times to get the over all contrast. When setting the low contrast , once again the ORIGINAL scene lighting ratio is determined , so a bright sunny day with deep shadows I may start with grade 1/2 or equivalent magenta, and I will make a light and slightly soft print to get as much highlight detail in my print, then I will hit the timer with 200 magenta or grade 5 filter as many times to accomplish the overall print I need.
By keeping my time around 10 seconds for the initial exposure I can determine dodge and burns by % of the overall time in the low contrast hit and the high contrast hit. If the ORIGINAL scene is low and flat lighting ratio then I will start with a higher filter or magenta number but still make a light and soft initial exposure then hit the timer with the higher contrast setting as many times I think needed.

Then when I am happy I will make two or three prints more with the same dodge burn , contrast settings but adjust the timer 1 or 2 seconds up or down so the next day I have three prints with the same PLAN but slightly different densities and I let the client or myself pick the image they like.

We do this with enlarge digital negatives as well via contact , it is obvious that the dodge and burn is harder. My young assistant has never made enlarger prints YET but she has done many shows with me and the fact she does not know the difference between dodging and burning on an enlarged contact verses an optical enlarger print is good, she is learning the hard way and when she starts putting negs in the enlarger she will see how easier the dodge and burn actually is.

I hope this makes a bit of sense to some using split printing methods.